Fine Print (Summer 2018)

The Good Fight: America’s Ongoing Struggle for Justice

The Good Fight vividly depicts the human face of America’s sporadically violent, often triumphant, always risky struggle to fulfill the promise of freedom and equality for all. Fought in the streets, the courthouse and the corridors of Congress, it is a story that has become America’s own morality play, illustrated through more than 180 memorable photographs and a dozen compelling essays, plus examples of music and lyrics that rallied America’s resistance to injustice. In addition, The Good Fight includes a smartphone app that enables readers to point their smartphones or tablets at more than 60 photos to stream video clips that vividly bring each story to life. The Good Fight captures the struggles—and the successes—experienced by women, African-Americans, Native Americans, Jews, Muslims, the LGBTQ community, Latinos, Asian-Americans and disabled people. It shows us how much we as a nation have accomplished. It also reminds us of how fragile is our success and how quickly this hard-fought progress can slip away if we do not remain vigilant.

My Dear Hamilton

My Dear Hamilton is the story of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton—a revolutionary woman who, like her new nation, struggled to define herself in the wake of war, betrayal and tragedy. Using thousands of letters and original sources, Eliza’s story is told not just as the wronged wife at the center of a political sex scandal but also as a founding mother who shaped an American legacy in her own right. Coming of age on the perilous frontier of revolutionary New York, Eliza champions the fight for independence. When she meets Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s penniless but passionate aide-de-camp, she’s captivated by the young officer’s charisma and brilliance and falls in love. However, the union they create—in their marriage and the new nation—is far from perfect. From glittering inaugural balls to bloody street riots, the Hamiltons are at the center of it all.

Homeplace: A Southern Town, a Country Legend and the Last Days of a Mountaintop Honky-Tonk

By John Lingan ’07
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

When John Lingan ’07 first traveled to Winchester, Va., it was to seek out a local honky-tonk owner and the DJ who first gave airtime to a brassy-voiced singer known as Patsy Cline, setting her on a course for fame. What Lingan found was a town in the midst of an identity crisis. As the U.S. economy and American culture have transformed, the ground under centuriesold social codes has shifted, throwing old folkways into chaos. Homeplace teases apart the tangle of class, race and family origin that still defines the town, and illuminates questions that now dominate our national conversation—about how we move into the future without pretending our past doesn’t exist, about what we salvage and what we leave behind.